The Impact Of Environmental Regulation On The Decoupling Of Economic Growth And Pollutants

"Rapid economic growth" and "severity of environmental pollution" are the current status of China’s economic development.In order to improve the environmental quality and realize the win-win situation of economy and environment,our country has implemented the corresponding environmental regulation policy.Whether the current environmental regulation means can promote the coordinated development of economy and environment is the focus of scholars’ research.Because of the continuous incentive effect of economic environment regulation,based on this,this paper takes the panel data of each province in our country as the sample,and from the perspective of economic environment regulation.In this paper,Tapio decoupling elasticity coefficient is used to measure the degree of separation between economic growth and environmental pollution,and the transmission mechanism and influence of cost-based environmental regulation and investment-oriented environmental regulation on the decoupling of economic growth and pollutants,and tries to provide the basis for the government to formulate environmental regulation policies,so as to maximize the role of economic environment regulation in promoting the decoupling of economic growth and pollutants.This paper argues that cost-based environmental regulation and investment-oriented environmental regulation can not only directly affect the decoupling of economic growth and pollutants,but also through the path of technological innovation and industrial structure indirectly affect the decoupling of economic growth and pollutants.At the same time,the mutual influence between regions cannot be ignored.The strategic interaction between regions can also affect the decoupling index in a certain extent.Therefore,based on the direct and indirect effects,this paper introduces the spatial effect to study the spatial spillover effects of each variable.Furthermore,five basic assumptions are put forward on the basis of direct influence,indirect influence and spatial effect.Next,this paper tests the five basic hypotheses mentioned above.First of all,we empirically analyze the dual effects of cost-based environmental regulation and investment-oriented environmental regulation on the decoupling of economic growth and pollutants through China’s provincial panel data during 2005-2014,with the fixed effect model.Specifically,introducing cost-based environmental regulation and investment-oriented environmental regulation variables,we investigate direct relationship between economic environment regulation and decoupling index.Furthermore,we construct cross terms of cost-based environmental regulation,investment-oriented environmental regulation and technological innovation,industrial structure to explore indirect relationship between economic environment regulation and decoupling index.Secondly,on the basis of the panel fixation effect,this paper introduces space matrix,starts from the interaction strategy of economic environment regulation in different regions,and uses spatial Durbin model to analyze the spatial correlation of decoupling.By comparing the empirical results of fixed effect model and spatial Durbin model,we draw the following conclusions:In view of the actual situation in China,cost-based environmental regulation can directly promote the decoupling of economic growth and pollutants,but through technological innovation and industrial structure path indirectly impede the decoupling of economic growth and pollutants.Investment-oriented environmental regulation inhibits the decoupling of economic growth and pollutants,which promotes the decoupling of economic growth and pollutants through technological innovation and industrial structure.From the perspective of spatial correlation,the decoupling of economic growth and pollutants of each region will affect each other.The decoupling of a region is not only affected by the factors in the region but also affected by other regions;the rapid pace of decoupling in other areas will promote the decoupling of economic growth and pollutants in this region.Finally,based on the results of the empirical research,this paper puts forward the corresponding policy recommendations.In order to further promote the decoupling of economic growth and pollutants and realize the coordinated development of economic growth and environmental protection,the central government should adhere to performance appraisal combining economic growth with environmental quality,so as to avoid the local government ignoring environmental protection in pursuit of economic growth;The government should appropriately increase the intensity of cost-based environmental regulation,control it in the acceptable scope of the enterprise,and give full play to the promotion function of cost-based environmental regulation;strengthen the supervision of pollution treatment investment amount,establish the policies of using investment:pre-approval,event supervision and ex post facto inspection system to ensure that investment in pollution control should be used where it is appropriate;establish cooperation mechanisms between local governments,promote exchanges and cooperation between governments to achieve coordinated development of the economy and the environment.The innovation of this paper is mainly embodied in two aspects.On the one hand,this paper not only studies the direct impact of environmental regulation on the decoupling of economic growth and pollutants,but also studies the indirect impact by introducing cross terms of environmental regulation and technological innovation,industrial structure.Combining direct and indirect effects,the role of environmental regulation is analyzed more comprehensively.On the other hand,this paper introduces the spatial matrix,and uses spatial Durbin model to study the spatial effects of the decoupling of economic Growth and pollutants.